A DERELICT OF WALL STREET.
On his way back to the office Jack stopped at the Seaman’s Bank, on
the corner of Wall and Pearl Streets, and opened a personal account
for $150. The balance of the $200 he had received from Mrs. Breeze
he handed over to his mother when he got home that night. You may be
sure there was great joy in that little household over this unexpected
windfall, and now the future looked very bright for them indeed.
On Saturday afternoon Frank Simpson severed his connection with Mr.
Atherton’s office, and the two boys parted in an especially cordial way.
Nothing of any moment occurred during the next three or four months to
interrupt the regular routine of Jack’s duties.
He and his chum, Ed Potter, both had the Saturday half-holiday during
the summer, and they put it in mostly playing ball up at the Olympic
Field.
One day Jack learned that Hartz’s messenger was about to leave him,
so he called on the broker and asked him if he would give his friend
Potter a trial.
Hartz, who had a good opinion of Hazard, readily agreed to oblige him,
so next day Ed came down to Wall Street and Jack introduced him to
Hartz.
In a day or so, Potter was taken into Hartz’s office on trial, and,
proving satisfactory, was told that he would be advanced, if he
deserved it, when the opportunity presented itself.
Everybody who ran across Jack Hazard liked him.
This was especially true in respect to those in the office with whom
the boy came into daily contact.
From Mr. Atherton himself down to the least important clerk it was all
the same.
It is possible, if there was any choice in that matter, Jack liked
Millie Price, the stenographer and typewriter better than anyone else.
Most everyone said she was a pretty girl, and what everybody generally
says goes.
She was certainly attractive in her manners, vivacious in her talk, and
generally polite and agreeable in her deportment.
She was a smart worker, was well up in her business, and had the
confidence of the firm.
“She has a level head and doesn’t put on any airs,” said Jack to his
friend Ed one day when he was speaking about her.
“I s’pose she gets good pay,” remarked Potter.
“I believe she gets twelve dollars. She lives in Brooklyn with her
mother, who is a widow, and I guess all the money they have is what she
makes.”
“She isn’t the only girl that supports her home.”
“That’s right,” nodded Jack, and then they began to talk of something
else.
Next day Jack happened to be over at Hartz’s office on business for
his firm when a seedy-looking old man, with a dissipated and dejected
aspect, shuffled into the place.
“I want to see Mr. Hartz,” he said in a trembling voice.
“Mr. Hartz is engaged,” replied the clerk, turning away.
Just then Hartz came out of his private room, and the visitor motioned
to him in an eager sort of way.
“Well,” said the broker, coldly, as he stepped up to the railing, “your
account is closed, Mr. Tuggs. We sent you a notice and, as you didn’t
respond, had to close you out at twenty-two, with a balance against
you. Jenkins,” addressing his head bookkeeper, “prepare a statement of
Mr. Tuggs’ account and hand it to me with notice of sale. Sit down,
Mr. Tuggs. Statement ready presently,” and Mr. Hartz re-entered his
sanctum, while the customer, with a gesture of despair, tottered over
to the indicator and examined it with hungry eyes.
Jack had overheard it all, and he watched this old derelict of Wall
Street with sympathetic eyes.
“Who is he?” he inquired of the clerk who had brought him the envelope
he was to take back to Atherton’s.
“Whom do you mean? Oh, Tuggs?” and the dapper clerk laughed sneeringly.
“He’s got to be a regular nuisance round here, and we’re trying to get
rid of him. He was rich once--a retired manufacturer, I think, who
caught the Wall Street fever. Hartz has always been his broker, and I
guess has sheared him down to his last dollar. At any rate, he used
to shovel the dough in at a comfortable rate, but somehow or another
he was nearly always on the wrong side of the market, and of late his
investments haven’t amounted to shucks. Besides, he’s taken to drinking
and has grown so disreputable in his looks that the boss doesn’t care
to have him around any more. This last deal of his was two hundred
shares of Lebanon and Jericho, which he bought on a ten-per-cent
margin, as usual, for a rise, and I guess it took his last dollar. It’s
fair stock, but fluctuates a good deal. After he bought it, it went to
thirty-six, when he should have sold out. But he didn’t; expected it
would go higher, of course, like all the lambs. Then it began to drop,
and ever since it’s been below thirty-two he’s been on the anxious
seat,” with a grin. “He’d drop in a dozen times a day and ask questions
about it. He gave us all a pain; so I guess Hartz thought it was time
to choke him off.”
“He couldn’t close him out unless the stock went down ten per cent,”
said Jack.
“Of course not,” replied the clerk; “but it got pretty close to the
danger mark day before yesterday, and we sent him a demand for more
margin.”
“And he couldn’t produce?”
“He didn’t. Just before the Exchange closed Lebanon and Jericho touched
twenty-two.”
“And Mr. Hartz sold him out?”
“Not at all. Hartz had something else to do than thinking about that
measley little transaction.”
“But I heard him tell the man he had closed him out at twenty-two,”
persisted Jack.
“Well,” said the clerk, with a wink, “there are more ways than one of
killing a cat. The boss saw a chance of getting rid of an undesirable
customer when he noted that the stock had touched twenty-two,
though the last quotation, a few minutes later, was twenty-four and
three-eighths. He simply made an arrangement this morning with another
broker and told Jenkins to make an entry of the transaction as having
occurred yesterday and to report him closed out at twenty-two--see?
That’s done every day,” nodding good-bye to Jack.
The boy understood, and his lip curled at the meanness of the
transaction, for the steal was small.
Not only that, but Jack knew that most reputable brokers, in a case
where a man had been a good customer of the house, would sooner have
strained a point in his favor than have worked the squeeze game against
him.
But Hartz wasn’t accustomed to do business in that way.
“I’m dead sorry for the poor old fellow,” murmured Jack, turning to
leave, just as Jenkins came over and thrust the statement into Tuggs’
trembling fingers.
The old fellow looked at it blankly.
“I believe it’s all a lie,” he said, hoarsely. “I don’t believe Hartz
has sold my stock at all. It touched twenty-two, and he reports it
sold at the lowest price, though it rose immediately to twenty-four
and three-eighths. They credit it on my account at twenty-two, and it
is now thirty, and they steal a profit to themselves of over eight
hundred dollars, and cast me out a beggar. It closed at twenty-two
and three-eighths, and opened at twenty-two and five-eighths. It is
infamous! But what can I do? I am ruined. I am helpless. I am utterly
at the mercy of this man. He is rich with the money he has taken from
fools like me, and yet he will not help me.”
Jack listened to his ravings in silent pity and held the door open for
him to totter out.
Later in the day, just after the Exchange had closed, Jack ran across
Tuggs again on Wall Street, coming out of an office building with a
bundle in his hand.
He looked more despairing than ever, if that could be possible.
He stood for several minutes, looking up and down the thoroughfare as
if not knowing which way to go.
Then he started across the street, staggering like a drunken man, just
as an express wagon came swinging along at a rapid rate.
Jack sprang forward just in the nick of time to save him from being
trampled on by the horses.
“Where in thunder are you going to?” the driver yelled at him in an
angry tone.
Tuggs took no notice of the remark.
Indeed he seemed hardly conscious that he had just escaped a grave
peril.
He stood swaying to and fro in Jack’s grasp like some scarecrow that
had come from a cornfield.
“Let me help you across,” said the boy.
Tuggs looked at him with lack-lustre eyes and stepped out as Jack
pulled him along by the arm.
“Where are you going?” asked Jack, after he had landed him on the
sidewalk.
“I don’t know,” said Tuggs, wearily.
“I guess you’d better go home, hadn’t you?” suggested the young
messenger.
“Home?” muttered the old man, in an absent kind of way.
“Where do you live?” asked Jack, curiously.
The boy had to repeat the question before he learned that Tuggs was
stopping at the Mills House--that haven for derelicts of all ages and
conditions.
“Gee!” thought the young messenger, “if he was a retired manufacturer
once, he’s sunk pretty low. I guess Wall Street has much to answer for.”